Candidate: Michael McCracken, DDS, PhD, is motivated and committed to an academic career involving clinical research. He has demonstrated his ability to complete projects and work independently in the past, and shows the qualtities necessary to become a productive researcher with the education and training provided by this grant. Mentors: Larry Moreland, MD, has as long track record of mentoring clinical researchers. He is the PI of the NIH-funded K30 program at UAB and is the Director of the Pittman General Clinical Research Center. Dr. Marjorie Jeffcoat has also mentored many young investigators, and is Chair of Periodontics at the UAB School of Dentistry and PI on the Oral Health Research Training Grant. Dr. Moreland and Dr. Jeffcoat have collaborated successfully on several previous projects, and are committed to the research outlined in this proposal. Dr. George Howard is the Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health. He will work with the candidate with the didactic training portion of the training and with statistical support of the research. Dr. Graciela alarcon has a long history in outcomes research in musculoskeletal diseases. Environment: The UAB Medical Center provides depth and diversity of clinical research endeavors as well as the state-of-the-art physical resources that are necessary to support this K23 application. UAB is situated on more than 70 square blocks in the city of Birmingham. With over 16,000 faculty, staff and employees, an annual budget for l999-2000 of over $1.15 billion dollars, and extramural funding exceeding $286 million dollars in 1998-1999, UAB provides a solid environment for this training program. Research: The proposal for this training opportunity is to investigate the severity of periodontal disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The hypothesis is that patients with inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis are more susceptible to inflammation of the periodontal tissues. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that among patients with rheumatoid arthritis, an association exists between the rate of progression of inflammatory arthritis and the progression of periodontal disease.